Sudan allowing some aid groups back in

The Sudan government is allowing some aid groups back into Darfur. In addition, the government is allowing the aid groups that remain to expand their efforts.

From the BBC, has more of the latest development on Darfur.

Sudan expelled 13 foreign aid groups in March after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir.

Meanwhile, the backer of a conference on Darfur says it has been cancelled because of opposition from Sudan.

It was intended to bring together some 400 people from Darfur's diverse ethnic groups in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Pro-government groups as well as those close to Darfuri rebels were included.

Funded by Sudanese expatriate and telecoms entrepreneur Mo Ibrahim, it also had the backing of the UN, the African Union and the Arab League.

"The Sudanese government is obstructing the safe passage of Darfurian delegates from Sudan, forcing us to cancel the conference," his foundation said.

Mr Ibrahim told the BBC delegates had being harassed, their passports withdrawn and that some had been warned they were engaging in activities against the state.

BBC Africa analyst Martin Plaut says work to prepare for the conference has been under way for nearly a year, and UN planes and helicopters had been on standby to help airlift the delegates to Ethiopia.

The UN says that up to 300,000 people have died during the conflict in Darfur and 2.7 million been driven from their homes.

Don't forget to leave food out for your letter carrier Saturday

Make sure you leave more than letters for your mailman on Saturday. The National Association of Letter Carriers will have their annual "Stamp Out Hunger" food drive. The event encourages people to donate non-perishable food items the the post officers will contribute to local food banks.

Out of the thousands of stories we have come across, we pick out one from our home state. From The Saginaw News, writer Jean Spenner explains the event further.

A U.S Postal Service letter carrier, Patty Sedlock will work twice as hard as normal Saturday, and the thought gives her chills -- in a good way.

As she delivers the mail on her walking route in the Handley Elementary School neighborhood, she will pick up donations for the Stamp Out Hunger food drive effort, the nation's largest single-day drive.

Last year, Sedlock picked up food enough to fill 16 large plastic mail tubs.

"You don't get extra pay and you don't get extra time, so you know you have to work extra hard," said Sedlock, 50, of Saginaw.

"You think that you would dread working on that day, and you do," said the veteran letter carrier, who has participated each of her 10 years on the job. "Then you start thinking about why you're doing it ... and I'm getting goosebumps on my legs right now just talking about it.

"It's so unbelievably rewarding, and people are so generous. It makes it so worth it."
It's so easy for residents to participate, she pointed out.

They need only leave a sturdy bag containing nonperishable foods in boxes or cans next to their mailbox prior to the time of regular mail delivery on Saturday.

"Witnesses To Hunger" visits Washington

Some time ago, we came across a photo exhibit called "Witnesses To Hunger" The exhibit featured the photos taken by poor women in Philadelphia and shows their fight to make ends meet.

A Pennsylvania senator has helped to bring the photo exhibit to Capitol Hill, along with the women who took the photos.

From the Philadelphia Enquirer, writer Alfred Lubrano details the women's visit.

The exhibit, which opened Monday and closes tomorrow, was paid for by Chilton's office through donations and was sponsored by Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D., Pa.). "I'm deeply grateful to these women for opening their lives to be documented and exhibited to the people in Washington and beyond," Casey said.

Sen. Arlen Specter (D., Pa.) joined Casey in praising the women, saying the photos were "especially effective in telling people what is going on."

Emotional and awed, the women were giddy on the bus ride down, listening to Beyoncé and marveling at the turn of events that has made them the object of so much attention.

"I'm floored, shocked, and amazed at all this," said Erica Smalley, 24. "This project is helping me not be negative about my life, though I have to say I still get depressed."

Chilton said "Witnesses" had turned isolated, impoverished women into a growing sisterhood with a camaraderie none had ever experienced.

"Remember, ladies," Chilton told the women as the bus motored toward the Capitol complex, "enjoy yourselves. This is all about you and your power."

Before entering the Senate building's three-story rotunda, the women changed from their street clothes into the donated ensembles. The transformation that the outfits created was quickly evident, as though the dark suits and dresses enhanced self-esteem.

"You all look good," said Ashley Ortiz, 24. In November, she had declared that the world needs "bottom feeders. . . . Who do you get to step on if not me?"

A moving story of a Canadian athlete visiting a malnourished child in Uganda

Canadian Olympic rower Jane Rumball is involved in the charity Right To Play. Part of her duties as ambassador takes her to under developed countries to visit with the kids that the charity helps. "Right To Play" uses sports as a tool for development in the children.

Jane Runball related her recent visit to Uganda to columnist Bruce Hallihan of The Daily Gleaner.

"The scene was one I will never forget: crowds of joyful, boisterous African children laughing and clapping, giggling at the awkward muzungu Olympic athlete who couldn't match their rhythm to save her life!

"It all happened under the unbelievably blue Ugandan sky, with rich red earth and lush greenery surrounding. It was surreal. For a moment, we probably all forgot where we were: Nakivale refugee camp, home to almost 50,000 displaced persons who had to flee their countries in order to survive. Immense poverty, rampant diseases, and unspoken stories of conflict.

"Nothing here seemed to faze the children, though ... for a brief moment in time, everyone at the school in Nakivale forgot about conflict, hunger, poverty, and sickness. Instead, we laughed, danced, got rich African soil all over our faces and bodies."
...

Rumball wrote more, but this part stuck with me the most:

"At a particularly difficult stop along the way in Nakivale, I found a little friend who I will never forget. She was a beautiful but severely malnourished girl who held tightly onto my hand throughout all the games.

"She had severely infected bumps on the side of her head, but still tried to dress up with earrings that looked like they were fashioned out of paper clips. Once she realized that she could hold my hand, she started slowing to rub her face on my arm.

"For a brief moment I wanted to pull away for fear of somehow getting that infection transmitted to my own skin ... but then I realized that most people probably do draw back and make her feel bad.

"I wanted to be different and let her just stay put beside me for the rest of the session," Rumball said. "It ended up being a very special moment for both of us, I think. She started to get into the games and laughed and danced like the other children around her. "Right To Play's tagline is 'when children play, the world wins'. Most of us would probably agree with that intuitively, but it came to life for me in the Ugandan refugee camp called Nakivale."

Anticipating a new child poverty report in the UK

New child poverty figures are about to be released in the UK. The government there has a goal of halving child poverty by 2010, but many anti-poverty groups fear that the new figures will show that the government is not doing enough.

From IC Scotland, we look at the buildup to the poverty report release.

Official figures on poverty levels in the UK are due to be published.

They come amid growing fears that the Government is set to miss its target to halve the number of children being brought up in financial hardship.

Campaigners are concerned the statistics will show that the chances of achieving the goal of halving child poverty by 2010-11 are looking increasingly remote.

The 2010-11 milestone was originally set in 1999 by then Prime Minister Tony Blair - when 3.4 million children were defined as living in poverty. It was set as an interim target on the way to eradicating child poverty altogether by 2020.

Since then ministers say that they have succeeded in lifting 600,000 children out of poverty, while a further 500,000 will be helped by measures that have been put in place since 2007.

However that still leaves a further 600,000 if the 2010-11 target is to be met.

In its report on the Budget, the Commons Treasury Committee complained of the lack of any new measures to tackle child poverty and it warned that the Government was set to miss its target by a "significant margin".

Save the Children also expressed concern that the latest figures could show little improvement, or even a worsening of the situation.

The charity urged the Government not to abandon the 2010-11 target in the face of the recession.

"Our sense is that the figures will be as bad or even slightly worse this year. If that is the case, that puts a question mark over the 2010-11 target which is deeply worrying for us," said Save the Children spokesman Dominic Nutt.

3.5 million hungry children in the US

3.5 million children in the United States are at risk of hunger according to a new survey. The survey uses government census numbers to gauge hunger with children. These hungry children are more at risk for developmental or cognitive damage.

The study found that percentages varied from state to state, depending on unemployment and poverty levels in each state.

From this Associated Press story that we found at KOAT, Mary Clare Jalonick breaks down the survey's numbers.

The not-for-profit advocacy group Feeding America based its findings on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department. The study, released Thursday, is the first to look at these numbers for children under the age of 5, according to the group.

The study also shows that in 11 states, more than 20 percent of children under 5 are at risk of going hungry. Louisiana has the highest rate, with just under a quarter of children at risk, followed by North Carolina, Ohio, Kentucky, Texas, New Mexico, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Idaho and Arkansas.

According to the Agriculture Department, 11 percent of households lacked enough food for an active, healthy life, before the economy worsened late last year.

The study looks at a range of children who are at risk, from those who have low quality or variety of food to those who regularly experience hunger.

A lack of nutritious food, especially in the earliest formative years, can have a lasting impact on physical and behavioral health, along with development and academic achievement.

"These children without the availability of nutrition don't have the chance to spring back," said Vicki Escarra, president and chief executive of Feeding America.

Escarra said the group is lobbying Congress and the White House for more federal funding for food bank programs that target young children. President Barack Obama has pledged to expand food aid and end childhood hunger by 2015.

...
The study was paid for by The ConAgra Foods Foundation, a charity arm of the large food company.

Comment from Josette Sherran of the World Food Programme

Earlier this week, some officials from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization said the fight against hunger could be lost. But in an opinion piece that we found today in the Huffington Post, Josette Sheeran Executive Director of the World Food Programme, is more optimistic.

In her opinion piece, Sherran begins be stating some of things she's learned, then gives an example of a great victory in the fight against hunger.

Most importantly, however, I have learned that hunger is a winnable problem that we can all help solve. Today the world is nourishing more people than ever before in human history. Ending hunger and malnutrition is not rocket science: it requires no new huge scientific breakthroughs. Between 1969 and 2004, we cut the proportion of hunger by half. Most recently, nations such as China, Brazil, Ghana, Malawi, Vietnam, Thailand and many others have been making serious gains against hunger.

In fact, less than 20 years ago China was WFP's biggest program. Today we provide no food aid to China. These nations follow the success of Europe and Japan in beating hunger after World War II. Many nations such as Ireland - the land of my own ancestors - only broke the cycle of famine, hunger and agricultural impoverishment a few generations ago.

Wherever I go, I always take with me a humble red plastic cup. It's a cup that came from Lillian, a little girl from Rwanda who once filled it each school day in one of WFP's school feeding programs. We gave Lillian a new cup, but for her and for 20 million school children fed by WFP, this cup may be the only food they receive each day. We have even seen many children take the incredible step of eating only half of their rations - so they can bring home the rest to brothers and sisters too young to go to school. http://www.wfp.org/content/fill-cup-fact-sheet.

In 2008, when food prices doubled, we at WFP were faced with a terrible dilemma: do we cut rations in half - or feed half of our beneficiaries?

Instead, I appealed to the world and a miracle happened: the world stepped forward and refused to let a food crisis become a humanitarian tragedy. By extending and expanding our school feeding programs and adding millions to our rolls, we were able to quell food riots and cool things down.

Former Senator George McGovern, one of the principal architects of our country's own school lunch programs, has a dream - that no child on earth would go to school hungry. What would it cost the world to say every schoolchild who needs it has at least a cup of nourishing food each day? Less than $3 billion a year - and in a year we read in the news that Christmas bonuses on Wall Street totaled more than $30 billion.

This is not permanent charity - as dozens of countries have "graduated" from food aid and school feeding programs, once food security is assured. As world leaders prepare for the G-8 Summit this summer, there will be a lot of talk about the economic crisis and financial rescues. But as we worry about Wall Street and Main Street, let us not forgot about the places where there are no streets - and make sure that we put a human rescue package at the top of the list. Let's keep the red cup filled. Learn more at: www.wfp.org

Zimbabwe economy shrank 14% last year

The Zimbabwe economy shrank 14% last year according to an e-mailed statement from the International Monetary Fund. The fund says the contraction in the countries economic caused "catastrophic" poverty.

From Bloomberg, reporters Nasreen Seria and Mike Cohentells tell us more of what was in the IMF's statement.

Between 2000 and 2007, the economy shrunk 40 percent, while inflation was estimated at a record 500 billion percent last September, the Washington-based lender said in an e-mailed statement today. The economy will probably rebound this year, expanding an estimated 2.8 percent, the IMF forecast.

Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk every year this past decade after President Robert Mugabe seized farms belonging to white farmers to redistribute to blacks. That slashed export earnings, resulting in shortages of food, fuel and foreign exchange. Mugabe agreed this year to share power with the opposition Movement for Democratic Change, paving the way for Zimbabwe to begin negotiating with the IMF and other lenders for loans.

“A decade of high inflation, severe economic decline, and rising poverty has culminated in an acute, ongoing humanitarian crisis,” the IMF said. “Zimbabwe is now at a critical juncture.”

The IMF’s Executive Board agreed today to lift its suspension of “technical assistance” to Zimbabwe and plans to help the country with advice on tax policy, payments systems and banking supervision, the fund said.

The IMF requires Zimbabwe to clear its arrears to all multinational lenders and demonstrate a sound policy track record before it can resume lending to the southern African nation. Zimbabwe’s debt arrears total about $3.8 billion, with about $133 million owed to the IMF and a total of $1.1 billion to the World Bank and the African Development Bank.

Poverty numbers up in Maine

A new study from the University of Maine shows the percentage of people in poverty rising in that state as well. The increase mirrors the trend nationwide, and is similar to what was reported in Wisconsin this morning.

From this Associated Press story found at WMTW, we look further into Maine's numbers.

The Bangor Daily News reports that the 12.2 percent figure is about 1 percentage point lower than the national average and compares to Maine's 2000-01 poverty rate of 10.1 percent.

Researcher Ann Atcheson said traditionally, when a recession ends, poverty rates continue to rise.

Broken out by counties, Washington County was the highest with a poverty rate of 20.1 percent, while York County was lowest at 8.2 percent.

The poverty line in the report is defined as $20,650 for a family of four.

Video: Poverty's vicious cycle from CBS News

A group of NGOs say the Asian Development Bank does more harm than good

Recently the Asian Development Bank pledged to triple it's lending to help Asian poverty. During the global recession the bank wanted to do more to prevent the effects the recession will have in creating many more poor people. They felt the best way to do this was to increase the number of projects the bank lends to.

However, a group on Non-Governmental Organizations has blasted the ADB, saying their anti-poverty projects do more harm than good. They claim that their projects displace people from their homes, hurt the environment, and does not lift people out of poverty.

From this IRIN story that we found in Reuters Alert Net, we learn more about what this group of NGOs have to say.

But the NGO Forum on ADB, a network of 250 activist groups that has been monitoring the bank's activities since 1992, called the move "irresponsible and dangerous", alleging the region had experienced forced displacement and environmental degradation caused by ADB-funded projects.

The NGO Forum said the capital increase was largely designed for private sector clients and big infrastructure, and numerous studies had shown that such financing did not benefit the poorest.

"If not managed well, this 200 percent general capital increase could easily translate into a more than 200 percent increase in social and environmental harm," Red Constantino, executive director of the NGO Forum, said in a statement.

According to the International Accountability Project, a global development watchdog, at current rates, approximately 15 million people in the world every year are forcibly displaced from their homes, communities and lands to make way for large development projects such as mines, dams, power plants, infrastructure and plantations.

In Nepal, 20,000 people will be forced to move from their land to make way for the planned ADB-funded West Seti Hydropower Project in the northwest, said Ratan Bandari, whose family will be among those relocated if the project goes ahead.

"We're not provided with any information about the project, except from reports," Bandari told IRIN at the ADB annual meeting on the Indonesian island of Bali from 2 to 5 May.

"There's no internal investment in the project. There are so many problems. There's no information and there's no meaningful consultation with the locals," he said.

Kuroda said the bank had done its best to make its projects environmentally sustainable.

"We have appropriate accountability mechanisms through which any complaints regarding environmental safeguards, resettlement issues could be resolved appropriately," Kuroda told a news conference on 2 May in Bali.

"I think ADB has learned quite a lot from past experiences and we have made substantial progress and I must say most of our infrastructure projects actually improve the environment," he said.

Wisconsin poverty level increases to 12 percent

The University of Wisconsin has released a new report on the state's poverty rates. The report claims that the global recession in increasing the number of people in poverty in the state. The percentage of Wisconsin citizens in poverty is up 1.8 percent to 12.6 percent of the state's total population.

From The Badger Herald, reporter Rachel Vesco breaks down the numbers.

The report — put together by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty — hopes to influence state policies that will help citizens living in poverty while exposing the depth of poverty in the state.

Milwaukee County has the state’s highest poverty rate at 17.3 percent, but the rate varies greatly throughout the county. Ten counties in the northwestern part of Wisconsin tied for second with rates of 14.4 percent each, while Rock County rested in third with a rate of 12.8 percent.

Waukesha County has the state’s lowest poverty rate, 3.7 percent.

The report also found statewide enrollment of individuals in the Supplementary Nutritional Assistance Program has escalated. Since 2007, enrollment in the program increased by 37 percent, rising in every county and demographic region of the state. In some counties, enrollment increased by more than 50 percent.

Timothy Smeeding, director of the IRP, said he was most surprised to see the large increase in citizens on SNAP over the past two years.

“I was surprised to see how fast people need food stamps. That was pretty amazing,” Smeeding said.

Smeeding said if he could, he would like to go back and evaluate the effect other state and federal policies have had on poverty, like the policies included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

How poverty contributed to the Swine Flu deaths in Mexico

We don't want to join in the media freak-out about swine flu, but we did find this story relevant to poverty.

Medical experts are looking into why there were many more deaths in Mexico than elsewhere. The medical community blames poverty and self medication as some of the causes for the death toll.

From this Washington Post article that we found in The Spokesman Review, writers Joshua Partlow And William Booth also point to the illnesses spread throughout densely populated areas.

Among the largest concentrations of swine flu cases is in Iztapalapa, with nearly 2 million people the densest, most populous of Mexico City’s 16 districts, and also one of the poorest, said Miguel Angel Lezana, the government’s top epidemiologist.

“It’s an area with a huge demographic concentration. Since this is a disease that is transmitted and spread by personal contact, when you have this huge accumulation (of) people in a rather small area, you have a greater opportunity to spread the disease,” Lezana said. “Besides, these are the people with not actual lack of access, but difficulty getting access to medical facilities, so they get there late to the doctor or the ERs in case they need it.”

The reasons behind this delay have little to do with apathy, according to Mexican patients and doctors.

“Delaying medical care is a characteristic of poverty. For people living close to the edge, taking off a day to visit a doctor or staying home sick is literally taking food out of their mouths,” said Paul Gertler, a professor of economics at the School of Public Health at the University of California at Berkeley, who has worked in Mexico.

Mexico has three parallel health care systems. Workers who are employed by the government or private companies are part of the national social security system, as are their families. When they go to a hospital or doctor, the care is mostly free. The uninsured, about 50 percent of the population, include the unemployed and those who work in the informal economy. They also have access to health care, at public clinics and hospitals run by the Health Ministry. They are required to pay for services, but the amount is based on their income. It is often just a few dollars for a doctor’s visit. About 3 percent of people visit private hospitals using insurance or, if they are wealthy enough, by paying in cash.

“Mexico is a country with a lot of self-medication,” said Homero Martinez, a researcher at the Rand Corporation in Los Angeles who specializes in the study of the Mexican health care system. “You can go to the pharmacies, they are open 24 hours a day, they deliver, and you can buy all the medicine you want for yourself – and your neighbors.”

During the outbreak, when masses of people became concerned about the possibility of infection, patients waited hours to see doctors. Some family members slept overnight on the sidewalks. The government deployed more than 100 ad hoc clinics – trucks and tents staffed with doctors and nurses – to quickly screen for prospective flu cases. At one mobile clinic in Iztapalapa, residents last week said they had waited for up to four hours to see the doctor. At one point, care was delayed further because a crying boy had a high fever and the doctor wanted him rushed to a hospital, but no ambulance was available.

Health care has become more accessible during the outbreak. Calderon decreed last week that all public and private hospitals provide care for people with flu symptoms.

Road building project in Bangladesh to employ poor women

A government funded road building project will employ poor women to help them climb out of poverty. Bangladesh announced the new project yesterday that will employ over 24,000 women. The employment will not only give the women a wage but will also deposit money into savings accounts set up for them.

This story from The New Nation details the project for us.

The women, mostly widow, divorced and abandoned were employed under a two-year contract for rural road maintenance and getting Taka 100 per day.

The initiative was taken under a Local government division project titled 'Rural Employment Opportunities for Public Assets (REOPA),' being implemented at a cost of 28.55 crore with financial assistance of European Commission and UNDP.

Of the daily wage, each of the women will get Taka 70 and rest Taka 30 will be deposited as savings in their own bank accounts, as they could use the savings in various income generation activities in future.

This was revealed on Monday at a media dialogue, organised by the local government division at the Jatiya Press Club here to exchange views with the journalists about different aspects of the project. Senior journalist Farid Hossain moderated the discussion while project director of REOPA Akmal Hossain, leader of the international team of REOPA project Goran Jonson and counselor of European Commission Dr Klaus Dieter Gautsch spoke.

Five women of the project beneficiaries were also present on the occasion.

Akmal Hossain said the objective of the project will significantly contribute to poverty alleviation in rural areas and mainstreaming destitute women into development activities in line with the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) and Bangladesh's Commitment to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

Thirty destitute women have been employed from each of the 388 unions at first phase and 33 destitute women each at second phase for maintenance of 30 kilometre rural road of each union annually. After completion of the two-year cycle, the women would be involved themselves in various income generating activities as they will get nearly Taka 22,000 from their savings. "During the project period we are also providing various training like cow and goat rearing and poultry as the women could be able to sustain their present socio-economic condition," Akmal said.

FAO: The fight against world hunger could be lost

The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization is very alarmed over the increase in hungry people. Now one billion people are hungry compared to 850 million ten years ago. The FAO doesn't even blame the current global recession for the problem, but says the increase began in the 1980's.

Leaders from the FAO made statements on the increase of hunger ahead of meetings in Paris. From the Voice of America, reporter Joe DeCapua covered the statements.

Experts from the FAO and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development open a two-day meeting in Paris Tuesday to discuss the problem. Joseph Schmidhuber, head of the FAO's Global Perspectives Unit, spoke from Rome about the growing number of people labeled as hungry or malnourished.

"We've seen first a stagnation in the number of under nourished people and then actually we saw quite an increase. And we expect a further increase due to the financial and economic crisis. The first increase was essentially an increase that reduced implicit incomes through higher food prices and the second one is an increase that will reduce explicit incomes and purchasing power through the financial and economic crisis," he says.

The Paris meeting will look for long-term solutions. "The meeting will focus on investing in agriculture and food security. What we sense now is an urgent need to step up investment in agriculture in order to avoid the situation as we had in the early 1980s," he says.

The economic crisis of the 1980s, triggered in part by a debt crisis, brought a sharp downturn in investment in agriculture. Schmidhuber says that resulted in "a reduction of production and stagnation in the fight against hunger."

Last June, in Rome, international donors held an emergency meeting in Rome on soaring food prices and widespread food shortages. Asked whether anything substantial has come from that meeting, he says, "What we've seen is actually that international prices went down considerably. There's no doubt about that." However, what did not happen in many countries was an equal decline in national prices. In fact, in some cases food prices actually rose.

"One of the problems we see as an organization is that we saw enormous pledges in 2008 in the meeting…but there was relatively little follow-up in terms of actual investment. So, we saw pledges to the tune of $26 billion and we saw…actual money coming forward to the tune of $2 billion."

Sanctuary Trust: eliminating homelessness in Shelby County Alabama

Here is a story about a great program that strives to eliminate homelessness in a county of Alabama. The Sanctuary Trust finds homeless people in the county and has a group of churches sponsor the family. The Trust provides a temporary home, while the churches help with other needs, like food or starting savings.

From The Birmingham News, writer Scottie Vickery introduces us to two leaders of the program.

If Ken Flowers and Werner Beiersdoerfer have their way, the issue of homelessness in Shelby County will be eliminated one family at a time.

Already the men, trustees with the Sanctuary Trust for Shelby County, can mark two Montevallo families off their list.

Each of the families -- a father with two daughters and a single mother with five children -- lived for several months in transitional housing provided by the trust.

The Calera-based ministry works with churches to provide free housing, food and other needs to families struggling to get back on their feet. U.S. Census Bureau figures show that 6.9 percent of Shelby County residents live in poverty.
...
"We can love these people back to life again," said Mark Davis, pastor of Christian Life Fellowship in Calera, which will soon sponsor families in that community.

"We can surround them with the support they need," he said. "It's a great chance to help people put their lives back together after having to endure a lot of hardship and struggle."

And that, Flowers said, is the goal. A Calera businessman who wishes to remain anonymous provided the start-up money for Sanctuary Trust in 2007. Others soon came on board, and the ministry is now privately funded by a small corps of Shelby County businessmen, Flowers said.

Once the trust was formed, Beiersdoerfer and Flowers met with pastors and staff from Shelby County social service agencies to determine what the needs were.
...

In Shelby County, the trust bought a home in Montevallo in April 2008, and the first two families to go through the program have lived there.

Two duplexes are under construction in Montevallo, and the trust has bought three more lots in the city. In addition, the trust owns five lots in The Glades of Whippoorwill subdivision in Calera, and Flowers hopes construction will begin there as soon as the Montevallo duplexes are finished.

Food pantry in California looks for a new home

Anyone have a building to lend? From the San Gabriel Tribune, comes this story of a Californian food bank looking for a new home. Writer Amanda Baumfeld explains why the food bank is looking for a new place.

The San Gabriel Unified School District plans to evict an emergency food pantry used by low income families to make way for a fitness center at Del Mar High School, authorities said.

Now, the People for People food pantry must find a new home - and a place to store 70 tons of food. The non-profit organization has inhabited a rent-free warehouse on the campus for the past 10 years.

"The school district has been great; they need their space," said Wathena Morrison , People for People treasurer. "We are just hoping someone can loan us a place for a year or two to give us a chance to find something else."

The school district needs the L-shaped building to proceed with a construction project that will provide additional classrooms and a fitness center for the high school, according to Marla Nadolney , district project manager. About 60 students in grades 9 through 12 attend the tiny high school, according to county records.

The project is being paid for with bond money approved by residents a year ago, Nadolney added.

Although they have until July, People for People is scrambling to find a building before May 9 when the annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive is held by the Post Office.

The food pantry gets 70 to 90 tons of food as a result of the drive which last them about a year.

"The problem is where are we going to put that food," asked Norene Rand , executive director.

The effect of the global recession on Ghana

Ghana, the only country in Africa to have met the Millennium Development Goal on hunger is now seeing more people struggle to find food thanks to the global recession. The drop in exports and investments that the recession has caused are leaving more in Ghana vulnerable to going hungry.

From this IRIN story that we found at All Africa, the UN's Food and Agriculture Director comments on the situation.

"Ghana has shown that real progress against hunger, malnutrition and poverty can be achieved, through increased investment and diversity in agriculture, and better access to food," said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf in a 23 April statement. "But Ghana will need greater support in identifying and helping the millions of people who remain food insecure and vulnerable."

"The economic crisis is already starting to affect people in Africa. The early impacts in Ghana are small, but they could get worse depending on how the situation evolves," Bauer said.

Price drops in cash crops such as shea nuts, export drops in some raw materials including timber, and remittance cuts could all contribute to people's increased vulnerability to food insecurity, says WFP.

But chief director at the Agriculture Ministry, Dr. Nurah Gyiele, said Ghanaians are "safe" from food insecurity this year. "I do not anticipate any clear and present danger on any significant scale in terms of food shortages because we still have maize stocks on the market," he said. "And there is no shortage in any of the other crops [rice, yams, cassava]...we can say that this year we are safe and even if there is a challenge we will be up to it."

The government has placed 900 metric tons of emergency rice and maize stocks in the regions where people are most prone to food insecurity: Northern Region, Upper East and Upper West, and plans to provide a further 900 mt over the course of 2009 as well as stocking the 10 regional capitals, according to Gyiele.

But some subsistence farmers in the north say they are already struggling to get by.

"The price of everything has gone up," said John Akarebo, shea nut farmer and father of six, in Northern region. "I spend about 80 percent of my earnings feeding the family. It is very difficult. If it were not for the government's policy to make basic education free, my children's education would be threatened."

An analysis of the Asian Development Bank's mission

With the announcement of more money for loans, the Asian Development Bank begins it's annual meeting to set policy for the upcoming year. The bank has had trouble pleasing it's critics after the economic expansions in China and India, and now the global depression.

From Forbes comes this analysis of the bank from reporter Stephen Wright.

Just two years ago, the Asian Development Bank was struggling with an identity crisis of sorts as a wave of new prosperity called into question its basic mission: lifting millions out of extreme poverty.

Now, as Asia sputters amid the global slowdown, the problem facing much of the region is no longer ensuring the fruits of rising affluence are spread evenly - but eking out any growth at all.

Armed with a much bigger war chest, the ADB - which starts its annual meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on Saturday - is renewing its pledge to fight poverty and preparing to take a bigger role in the region.

That might seem good news for Asia, but it's not universally welcomed. Some critics say its financing would be better left to the private sector while activists fault ADB-funded projects for harming the very people they aim to help.

On Thursday, the bank's 67 member countries approved a tripling of the ADB's capital to $165 billion, expanding the lender's ability to fight the global economic crisis and finance infrastructure and other projects in partnership with the private sector.

"We must do all we can to prevent the reversal of hard-won gains for our region in social and economic development, and in poverty reduction," ADB President Haruhiko Kuroda said in a statement.

On the sidelines of the meeting, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations along with China, Japan and South Korea are likely to approve enlarging an emergency currency pool to $120 billion - and make the funds easier to access in a crisis.

Psychotherapy for the developing world

Providing mental health to the poor in the developing world has been greatly overlooked. Research suggests that mental health issues are more prevalent in the developing world that in the fast paced developed world.

The Scientific American has a great story on a team of therapists working with refugess of the Somalian civil war. From writer Mason Inman, we see how therapy helped one who exeperience the civil war as a child.

It had been four years since 13-year-old Mohamed Abdul escaped civil war in Somalia, but he still had nightmares and flashbacks. When he was nine years old, a crowd fleeing a street shooting trampled him, putting him in the hos­pital for two weeks. A month later he saw the aftermath of an apparent massacre: about 20 corpses floating in the ocean. Soon after, militia-men shot him in the leg, knocked him unconscious, then raped his best friend, a girl named Halimo.

Recovering in the hospital, Abdul (not his real name) was overwhelmed by fear—and guilt, for not having helped Halimo. He felt unprovoked fury: he mistook people he knew well for the rapist and threatened to kill them. A few months later Abdul fled his homeland and landed in the Nakivale refugee settlement in Uganda. “I felt as if there were two personalities living inside me,” he said at the time. “One was smart and kind and normal; the other one was crazy and violent.”

Abdul had post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), an ailment characterized by fear, hyperarousal and vivid replays of the traumatic event. Fortunately, this refugee camp had an extraordinary resource. Psychologist Frank Neuner of Bielefeld University in Germany was offering “narrative exposure therapy” to its 14,400 Africans, mostly Rwandans. The approach coaxes trauma survivors to assimilate their troubling memories into their life stories and thereby regain some emotional balance.

After four 60- to 90-minute therapy sessions, Abdul’s flashbacks and nightmares disappeared; he was still easily startled but no longer felt out of control. His doctors deemed him “cured.”

Researchers and aid workers have historically overlooked mental health in developing countries, focusing instead on issues such as malnutrition, disease and high infant mortality, but that is changing. “What’s changed in the past 10 years is the realization that mental health is not separate from general health,” explains child psychiatrist Atif Rahman of the University of Liverpool in England.

Recent psychotherapy trials have achieved remarkable success in improving the lives of war survivors such as Abdul, poor mothers with postpartum depression and others victimized by the stresses of extreme poverty. The keys to a workable program for the impoverished include training ordinary citizens to be counselors and, in some cases, disguising the remedy as something other than a fix for emotional troubles.

Although many people think of mental illness as a plague of fast-paced modern life, some psychiatric ailments are actually more prevalent in the developing world, according to the World Health Organization. Of the several dozen wars and armed conflicts around the globe, nearly all are in developing countries, and this violence is leading to PTSD, which hinders recovery after the conflicts subside. Across South Asia, new mothers suffer from depression more frequently than they do in richer countries, according to a 2003 report by Rahman and his colleagues.